Spiritual Formation

Ultimately, prayer is about more than just feeling good and having God solve our problems. As we rediscover the wonder and true nature of prayer, may it deepen our walk with Jesus!

What if we had more childlike wonder in our lives? How would our interactions with God be different? How would we interact with family and professors and classmates differently? What would we talk and dream about?

I am keenly aware that our bodies have absorbed a gauntlet of grief throughout this traumatic year. And some of us, for the first time since March 2020, are stepping onto campuses that have been closed for over a year. How then, when we are committed to seeing God’s kingdom come on campus, do we enter NSO well?

Last-minute final papers, weekly discussion posts, and 12-page reports that seem to extend forever—don’t worry, I know the feeling too. For those of us who are students (and some of us who aren’t as well), there are some days—maybe even many days—when writing feels like a chore, something on a checklist to cross off.

Even in many places across the country where COVID restrictions are being lifted, and campuses are reopening soon, many things are still difficult with no easy solutions. We can’t avoid the darkness that surfaced in the last year and a half. It can feel overwhelming.

In an age of world-class preachers available at the click of a button, why should anyone bother going to a local church in-person and listen to a perhaps less gifted pastor exposit Scripture?

We are experiencing stressors stacked up, one on top of each other. Thankfully, there are things that we can do to deal with this stress.

Perseverance can feel like a dental visit; you don’t want it but know it’s good for you. And now, with the pandemic officially more than a year in, it feels like we’re being asked to endure still a little more.

With so many people hurting right now, I want to be available to everyone. But I’ll never be able to hold all that responsibility in my tiny little pockets. Jesus never asked me to.

I heard a sermon about how the true beauty of healing prayer lies in its portrayal of the kingdom of heaven. It invites us to know Jesus more intimately. I didn’t really understand this until I saw healing prayer work differently than I expected.